Zerowait is an international 3rd party provider of Parts, Services, and Support for Network Appliance equipment and the developer of SimplStor and SimplStor EVS.
Offices in USA, UK & AUS. Visit our On Line store http://www.thezerowaitstore.com/

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Folks often ask us about our road map and we try to make it as
simple as possible. Our goal is long term hardware reliability through affordable
enterprise-class service and support.You don’t need a sextant, chronograph and compass to get from where you
are to where you are going with Zerowait on your team. Our road map provides an
expressway to your destination without the hassles and tolls of your typical
vendor.

First, we provide our NetApp customers with a value conscious
alternative to NetApp pricing and policies. Our off-lease systems allow our
customers to add additional NetApp infrastructure (heads and storage) while staying
within today’s reduced budgets. And our highly skilled engineering staff offers
the best service and support available for NetApp equipment for as long as customers
want to run their systems.

Second, we develop features and hardware for our SimplStor product
line as they are requested by our customers to meet their needs. Our platform
was designed to allow adaptability to meet our customers’ needs. Sometimes
quite a few customers want the same thing and it becomes a standard product or
service. In 2013 we are introducing our FC and SSD
versions of SimplStor.

Providing customers with affordable and reliable long term service
and support for their NetApp and SimplStor storage hardware is our goal. If
that is your destination also, Zerowait can get you there with GPS precision
guidance.

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Last week I was visiting customers in Delaware. Some of
them have been customers and friends for well over a decade. I met with folks
from a university, a big colo provider, and a large computer services company.
All three organizations have large storage infrastructures which include NetApp
equipment and just about every other storage vendor.

One customer is building out their Wilmington data center
and they were talking about how Zerowait helps them control their NetApp
support and hardware costs. Another customer has a substantial NetApp
infrastructure and will be working with Zerowait on adding a lot of storage
over the next few months in their data centers. Zerowait is picking up more and
more customers who are looking strategically at their storage investments and
trying to get more value out of them. To an increasing number of members of the
NetApp user community, Zerowait is the preferred answer to sky high NetApp
support and upgrade costs.

A couple of our customers mentioned that there seems to
be a dichotomy in NetApp between the Filers and the E series and they were
unsure how the two lines complement each other. The systems don’t share an
operating system and seem to have very different pricing and value
propositions. Just like the E Series equipment that NetApp sells our SimplStor
product line does not share the OnTap operating system, but SimplStor is an
affordable, highly reliable platform that is flexible and gaining traction.
Customers are interested in using our SimplStor for tape replacement and also
are looking into FC applications for SimplStor. In 2012 we grew strongly in the
Energy sector and the Film and VFX business.

When the conversations turned to Zerowait’s prospects and
growth expectations for 2013 and beyond, I explained that we are building out
our Texas location and also have adapted our business model to the Australian
marketplace very successfully.Zerowait
is preparing for growth this year as more of NetApp’s customers embrace our
solutions to provide them affordable additional storage and extended service
cycles for their existing NetApp storage investments. Each of the customers I met
with last week recognized that Zerowait fills a unique and growing market niche,
and they all expect to do more business with us over the next few years.

Monday, January 14, 2013

Last week I was visiting customers in Atlanta, GA and the
surrounding area and we spoke of their biggest concerns for 2013. Not
surprisingly, most of the folks were battling with budgetary uncertainty. The
causes were varied, but the effects were the same, tighter cost controls on
storage and staff shortages.

I met with two customers in the banking sector; both are
understaffed and overwhelmed trying to meet regulatory documentation rules. The
cost of compliance with Dodd Frank regulations is so high it has cut into their
budgets for new storage equipment, so these customers are looking to extend the
life of their NetApp equipment and put more units under our support. They are
also looking at how they can use our SimplStor products to cut their costs for
archival storage.

I also met with customers in the media business, and they
are also looking for any way to stretch their budget dollars. Without funds for
new infrastructure these companies are also looking to stretch the lifespan of
their legacy infrastructures. Extending the service cycles of storage
infrastructure is one way of reducing costs that is being embraced by corporate
America as GDP Growth rates slow and inflation increases.

Surprisingly, the Department of Defense is one area where
there has been little attention paid to extending the life cycles of IT storage
equipment.You might think that an
organization that can keep a 50 year old B52 as a front line bomber would
understand how to extend the service cycles of equipment.And yet service and replacement cycle for the
DoD’s critical data storage equipment still seems to be dictated by the OEM’s
of the equipment.Maybe Sequestration
will bring some sense to DoD procurement cycles. As a taxpayer I hope it does.